Coach Lindy Callahan, who in his 97 years on this planet touched and influenced more lives than could ever by calculated, passed away quietly Wednesday at his home in Gulfport.
In his adopted hometown and far beyond, Callahan was a giant in high school athletics.
Born on Christmas Day, 1927, in Vicksburg, Lindy Gene Thomas Callahan turned out to be a gift to Mississippi sports: an athlete, a coach and finally an administrator who dedicated his professional life to improving the lives of young people.
“Lindy showed the rest of us how to do it,” is the way Mike Justice, a highly successful football coach soon to be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, put it. “As a high school coach and athletic director, he was the best of the best.”
“Everything Lindy Callahan did in life, he did with the utmost class,” said Don Hinton, a former coach and executive director of the Mississippi High School Activities Association.
In 1963, Coach Callahan broke my 11-year-old heart. The undefeated Hattiesburg Tigers, my favorite team, played his undefeated Gulfport Commodores at Milner Stadium in Gulfport on what is now Lindy Callahan Field. When those 1963 HHS Tigers took the field, they really did look like the LSU Tigers, both size-wise and in school colors. More than a dozen of them went on to play Division I football, including Ed Morgan, a future Alabama Crimson Tide halfback and Hattiesburg mayor who scored an early touchdown to give the Tigers a 7-0 lead. Final score: Gulfport 33, Hattiesburg 7. Gulfport, a much smaller team in physical size and numbers, turned Hattiesburg every which way but loose. That was part of a 35-game Gulfport winning streak and another streak of 42 consecutive victories in the old Big Eight Conference. Over Callahan’s last six seasons as Gulfport football coach, his teams won 54 and lost five.
Lindy really was one of those coaches who, as the late Jake Gaither described, could take his’n and beat your’n or take your’n and beat his’n. As an administrator, he hired splendid coaches, including Hall of Famer Bert Jenkins, the remarkably successful Gulfport basketball coach, the best I ever covered at any level in any sport.
That’s why Callahan is a member of nine different halls of fame, five on a national level and four more on a regional level. Put it this way: Any hall of fame he’s eligible for, he is in. In 1995, the MHSAA instituted the Lindy Callahan Student-Athlete Awards, college scholarships that annually are presented to 16 deserving Mississippi high school seniors.
His legacy goes far beyond all that. Callahan spearheaded the creation of the Mississippi-Alabama High School All-Star Game. He created guidelines and policies that athletic directors around the state still use today. For 57 years, he and Coach Leo Jones directed the Gulf Coast Coaching Clinic,an invaluable resource for coaches across the Deep South. Said Justice, “If you wanted to learn how to coach, that’s where you went.”
Although Callahan was born in Vicksburg, the son of a railroad engineer, he grew up in Meridian. There, he lived across the street from athletic fields that would shape his life. He was a football and baseball star, recruited to Ole Miss by football coach John Vaught and baseball coach Tom Swayze. He played both sports collegiately and often credited Vaught and Swayze with teaching him the organizational and leadership skills he would use professionally.
Two years ago, a book tour took co-author Neil White to a stop in Gulfport where Callahan showed up along with many of his former players. The bond between the old coach and his former players, now with gray hair themselves, was unmistakeable, an absolute joy to witness. Although his legs were failing him, Lindy’s mind was as sharp as any 20-year-old. Every time a former player referred to him as “Coach,” his eyes brightened and his lips curled into a smile.
All who knew Callahan know that as dedicated as he was to his professional life, he took the most pride in his family. He and his wife of 71 years, the former Ann Fincher, were the parents of three, grandparents of five and great grandparents of 10, all of whom called Coach Callahan “Papa.”
Callahan often referred to himself as “Lucky,” as in “Lucky Lindy,” And his really was a storybook life, even near the end. The ambulance that carried him from hospital to home, where he wanted to live his final days, detoured by Milner Stadium and Lindy Callahan Field for one last glance at a place he dearly loved. As fate had it, the stadium gates were open and the ambulance circled the track – one last victory lap for a champion.
